Wellness and Athletics

Earlham’s Wellness and Athletics mission statements both emphasize that students are expected to learn about their bodies and develop habits of wellness. This section brings together areas of the College that support these educational goals.

Wellness and athletics at Earlham include varsity and intercollegiate athletics, recreational sports and wellness programming.

Mission

In its commitment to provide the highest quality undergraduate education in the liberal arts and sciences, Earlham expects all its students to develop their intellectual, spiritual and creative capabilities, and to deepen their understanding of the purposes to which these capabilities may be put in service. We also expect students to learn about their bodies and to develop habits of wellness.

We understand wellness integrates aspects of the physical, intellectual, spiritual and community. We provide coursework, facilities and opportunities for students to grow in wellness, to develop a deeper understanding of their bodies both through exercise and study, to learn how to focus their energies and live balanced lives, and to improve their understanding of the requirements of health from youth through the decades after graduation.

Programming

The Wellness Program provides a breadth of coverage by touching the lives of every student. Furthermore, the program strives to impact the lives of the Earlham staff, faculty, and the Richmond Community as well.

Deliberately broad in content, Earlham defines wellness as the active, lifelong process of becoming aware of, and making healthy choices that lead toward a more healthy and fulfilling life. The program’s components of mind, body, spirit and community provide depth by working collaboratively with Earlham Health Services, Counseling Services, Office of Religious Life, Wilderness Programs, Residence Life and Recreational Sports to provide programs such as Wellness Late-Nights and our annual Wellness Fair. Group fitness classes including yoga, pilates and spinning are available. Additional services include massage therapy, personal training, and swim lessons.

Recreational sports at Earlham College are an integral and significant phase of the total wellness and fitness program. The primary purpose of recreational sports is to assist a majority of the community in acquiring a wide variety of leisure time skills. Recreational sports offer voluntary participation in team and individual sports and games; the desire to participate is of greater importance than skill level. They also offer the opportunity to participate in a sport without the time commitment of a varsity team.

Registration Information

All recreational sports teams are required to be composed of Earlham College students, faculty or alumni. All recreational sports events are co-ed. Team rosters vary from sport to sport, encouraging students to meet new people and build new skills. Groups that might form recreational sports teams include residence halls, houses, majors and special interest groups.

Groups or individuals are encouraged to add their names to sign-up sheets for Recreational Sports participation at the Athletics and Wellness Center Welcome Desk or Runyan Center Desk. Individuals without a selected team may give their names to the Recreational Sports Director. Organized meetings are scheduled for some sports and events.

Fall Recreational Sports

Climbing Wall Challenge

5K Run

Outdoor Soccer League

Racquetball Tournament

Winter Recreational Sports

Basketball League

Indoor Soccer League

Spring Recreational Sports

Kickball League

Volleyball League

Wiffleball Tourney

Flag Football League

Triathlon

Duathlon

Mission

In its commitment to provide the highest quality undergraduate education in the liberal arts and sciences, Earlham expects all its students to develop their intellectual, spiritual and creative capabilities, and to deepen their understanding of the purposes to which these capabilities may be put in service. We also expect students to learn about their bodies and to develop habits of wellness. From this foundation, we encourage our students to experience the disciplines and joys of athletic striving and competition.

Intercollegiate athletics involve a higher level of skill and commitment and provide opportunities for those students who are good at them to pursue excellence. The pursuit of excellence in athletics requires self-sacrifice, discipline, teamwork and concentrated effort — qualities we wish to model for all our students. At Earlham, we expect our best musicians to give concerts, our best scientists to deliver papers at conferences, our best actors to perform in plays, our best artists to give showings, and our best athletes to work with one another and compete against students from other colleges.

Those Who Represent Us in Competition

Earlham seeks to attract students who love sports and scholarship in equal measure. The ideal Earlham athlete is as satisfied with a good paper as a good game, as thrilled by a successful experiment as a winning race, as comfortable acting in a play as in making a free throw.

We expect Earlham athletes to be fully involved in the intellectual, political and social life of the College. Because athletics are not the only activity in their lives, they have friends who are not athletes — friends whom they met in classrooms, in labs, on committees and in student organizations. At Earlham, perhaps even more than at other small colleges, friends watch friends compete. Professors respect and appreciate the hard work of athletes in their courses and look forward to supporting those students in their athletic endeavors. Well-attended events are evidence that Earlham athletes are engaged in the larger campus community.

We aspire at Earlham to engage in athletics in a way that accords with our mission to improve human society. Successful athletic performance requires disciplined teamwork by people of different races, religions, ethnicities, nationalities, economic backgrounds, political persuasions and sexual orientations. Differences are both honored and transcended in the pursuit of team goals. We expect our athletes to collaborate effectively while maintaining high moral standards of personal conduct — and thereby model for all to see the possibility of a cooperative human society.

Earlham’s aspirations commit us to offering a model of college athletics in which academics are fully complementary. We insist that our athletes be inclusive, tolerant and socially responsible community members. Earlham athletes are student athletes in the fullest sense. They receive the same care as non-athletes throughout the admissions process and in the classroom.

The Values We Bring to Athletic Competition

As a learning institution, we expect Earlham student athletes to improve from game to game and from season to season. We expect Earlham student athletes and Earlham athletic teams to strive for excellence. We expect them to play consistently with intelligence, intensity, teamwork and confidence. Our athletic teams are a profound and visible model of the learning communities we nurture across the College.

We expect Earlham student athletes and athletic teams to play to win. We celebrate the students who win graduate fellowships, the students who are admitted to medical schools, the students who perform many hours of volunteer service. These achievements are signs that Earlham is achieving the excellence it values. Athletic victories are no different; they are benchmarks of excellence.

Victory is sweet and defeat is bitter. We celebrate victories, all of us feeling lifted by these accomplishments. In addition, victories bring all members of the community (including the alumni) together in a spirit of joy and community pride. Perhaps best of all, victories bring feelings of deep satisfaction to the athletes themselves. Victories become life-long memories — but so do defeats. We experience with our athletes the frustrations and disappointments of defeat. For teams that have tried their best and treated each other with respect and affection, all memories become good ones.

Athletics at Earlham

There are three forms of competitive athletics at Earlham: intercollegiate, recreational and club. Earlham’s varsity athletics are part of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Division III. Recreational sports offer on-campus competitions. Club sports are student-organized teams that compete off campus and are not supported by a full-time coach; they are cosponsored by Student Activities and Athletics.

Intercollegiate Athletics

Earlham College values intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of a liberal arts education. A conscientiously designed varsity athletic program can offer practical expression of the belief in the individual’s integrity, wholeness and potential for excellence and in the commitment of the individual to a community of persons with a common goal. The training, exercise and enjoyment of the mind and body, and the discipline of cooperation and competition that athletic experience can promote are essential aspects of a liberal education.

Nationally affiliated with the NCAA as a Division III member, Earlham offers academic scholarships to qualifying students as well as need-based financial aid. The College also is a proud member of the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference (HCAC). Consisting of 10 academically selective colleges and universities in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, the HCAC includes Anderson University, Bluffton University, Defiance College, Earlham College, Franklin College, Hanover College, Manchester College, College of Mount St. Joseph, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and Transylvania University. The HCAC is dedicated to fostering a complementary relationship between intercollegiate athletics and the pursuit of academic excellence.

Earlham embraces intercollegiate athletic competition as a learning experience which requires each participant to strive to excel, and according to the sport, to cooperate with team members and other contestants in an event defined by established rules and expectations. The peak experience for which athletes will be prepared, and which we hope they will strive to experience, is the union of mind, body and spirit in the competitive moment or encounter. Within reasonable limits, Earlham will provide a variety of varsity sports to satisfy the variety of student interests and will assure that men and women have equal opportunity to develop excellence in sports of their choice.

Varsity athletics offers that experience to individuals who wish to prepare seriously for competitive intercollegiate challenges. In combination with other competitive levels — activity classes, recreational sports and club sports —- the total athletic program complements and enhances the academic and social experiences of a liberal arts education.

Varsity Sports

Women

Men

Fall Sports

Cross Country

Field Hockey

Soccer

Tennis

Volleyball

Fall Sports

Cross Country

Football

Soccer

Winter Sports

Basketball

Indoor Track

Winter Sports

Basketball

Indoor Track

Spring Sports

Track

Spring Sports

Baseball

Tennis

Track

For more information on these varsity sports, visit the online home of Earlham Athletics.

About Earlham

Earlham College, an independent, residential college, aspires to provide the highest-quality undergraduate education in the liberal arts, including the sciences, shaped by the distinctive perspectives of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).